Book 3 Chapter 31: Considerations and Rejections

++The undead obey me more readily now. Their natural hostility seems not to extend to me, a fellow undead, and though they do not possess the social faculties to actively defer, it is only a trifling effort to extend my will and bend them to it.++

- Fragment of Lord Dread’s archives, date indeterminate.

I had to admit that Sethira’s suggestion was not without merit, and of course she was right that I had considered it myself.

It was risky, but then so many things were. It was also extremely promising. Undead do not tire the way humans do. They do not eat or sleep or drink, and certainly do not ask for wages. One zombie, reanimated with sufficient skill to actually perform labour, can do several times the work of any human simply because they never stop.

But necromancy was the greatest sin Garamon had.

I would not avoid it out of hand, there were some benefits worth risking the wrath of Gods, but for the time being I would…consider it. Long and carefully. It was not the sort of decision one could undo.

Another decision was more easily made, though. One regarding enchanted items for my personal equipment. Up until now I had been labouring on the assumption that I would not need them. I was already more powerful than most Demigods, which made me virtually untouchable provided I did not war with the Gods openly. If I did do that, I would be destroyed instantly regardless of my armament.

The trip to my laboratory had changed that, though. I realised how much I must have missed in the world for it to shift and warp in my absence, and how little I truly knew about what now lurked within it. I did not think it was likely that I would encounter something as powerful as that chimera again—it was, after all, created by the genius of Lord Dread, the fluke chance of a one-in-a-million mutation and ten thousand uninterrupted years to grow stronger—but the odds were not zero.

And the next time I faced off against a creature like that, I intended to make damn sure that I would enjoy the advantage in our combat, even if it happened in tight confines where my ultimately mortal reflexes impeded me. I started enchanting more seriously.

So far, I was not wanting for destructive power. Not much at least. While I immediately gravitated to the idea of creating some kind of disintegration weapon, to further enhance my favourite spell, I knew, practically, that my immediate concern was bodily fragility.

Isabel Vornholt had benefitted greatly from a shielding amulet, and so would Lord Dread.

I retired to the cavern of my leyline and began working on the project. Enchanting as Lord Dread, using all of my true power, felt wonderful. I had been churning out weak, inferior, primitive works one after another for weeks now, each one feeling like a chunk of my spirit was split off from the rest. I could never stand to make a lesser product, and now I got to craft something with the full extent of my abilities.

Platinum, I decided, would be the base material. It was more enchantable even than gold, and Lord Dread deserved the rarest materials possible for his protection.

My shield as Vornholt was a relatively simple thing. A layer of aether conjured around me, held with a continuous stream of mana to keep it from fully solidifying. This allowed it to flex and move as she did, while also letting it lock up and harden on sudden impacts to stave off killing blows. By the standards of Garamon it was already quite complex, but I could do better.

I began with an enchantment to conjure not one solid piece of aether, but hundreds of thousands of tiny, hovering flakes. Each of these flakes was a mere millimetre thick, but they would overlap enough that no attack could penetrate the shield without punching through several. Each would be enchanted to grip the flakes around them via telekinetic force, simulating the hardening effect of my old shield without needing to rely on fast impacts to trigger it. I would layer them all with various banishment effects for heat and force to add a less physical layer of defence, further enhancing things, and then when I was done I would include layers of actual, pure-energy shields in-between the flakes for even more protection.

To create an enchantment that did so many high-energy effects at once would take time, to do so with my full power, making it as strong as it could be, would take even more. I could not afford to dedicate the thousand necessary hours to it in only one sitting, as I would have liked to.

But I could chip away at the project one piece after another. I spent two hours getting a start on it that very day. Not enough to make anything resembling tangible progress, but I emerged from the cave as Isabel Vornholt feeling confident that I was only a few years away from owning the most powerful, non-divine protection in Arwyna. It was just a shame I would not be able to wear it in public.

I had been distracted from the necromantic labour question while I busied myself there, but it emerged again as I did.

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While I thought, I sought out Alira again. Sethira herself was busy organising her new cultists and overseeing their performance during the assault, something that I very much approved of. Now that our attackers knew how well defended we were, they would either give up entirely or muster a far larger assault to break through. I strongly suspected the latter was more likely than the former.

I needed to clear my head and give myself something to do besides flit through the endless possible avenues of attack my enemies might take, I found this something when I saw Alira again, sitting by herself and smoking on a rock. I approached her without really thinking about it.

“I did not know you smoked,” I observed. She looked up at me, cigarette holder lightly pinched between two fingers.

“I didn’t,” she replied. “Then the Vorets did their bullshit, and now I do.”

I could not help but smile. “I was going to practice my magic,” I said. “Would you like to accompany me?”

Her face lit up. “Oh, sure. It’s been years right. Where’s Agrian by the way? We always used to do it with him.”

My mood soured quickly. “He is seeing to his own affairs," I said stiffly. “And will not be making himself known here, not for a long time at least.”

She seemed to infer something I had not intended from my words, but nodded quickly. “That’s a shame. Still, it’ll be fun with just the two of us.”

Alira had of course grown stronger since last we met. In fact I was quite certain she could have applied for the position of Highmage and succeeded. That still did not leave her anywhere close to me of course, and she was awed by how wide the gap had become. We were not doing any serious kind of sparring, though our few bouts of exchanging missiles each ended in moments with her defeat, and when we practiced the technical and raw power side the disparity was even greater. In half an hour I felt essentially unfazed, my mana barely even depleted, while she was close to exhaustion from the strain on her Vessel.

“You’re as absurd as I remember,” Alira panted where she leaned against a boulder. “Talent is talent I guess.”

Most people would have been bitter about that, but Alira just seemed amazed. Then again, she had enough things to be bitter about already.

I took my own seat next to her. “You have improved,” I noted diplomatically. She burst out laughing.

“The gap’s going to keep widening until you’re in your twenties, then it’ll stay as big as it ever is,” she noted. “I’ll never be even half as powerful as you.”

That was true, nor would she ever see the substance of mana. Then again, being even close to half my power was something precious few magicians in all of history could honestly claim.

“...I miss Agrian,” Alira said after a moment. “He’s okay, right?”

There was an almost pleading look in her face, and I saw the worry clear as day.

“He is fine,” I told her. “Just…he is not interested in seeing me at the moment. I think he is having some sort of period of introspection.”

I knew Agrian would come out the end of it stronger than he went in, it was just a matter of time for him to draw the right conclusion and find his place in the world again. A necessary period of pain for an infinite reserve of strength once it was over. I could only wait for him to acquire that strength.

Alira did not look reassured, though. Of course, she did not know what I did.

“He always used to drool over me. Do you remember that?”

“I remember.”

“He once asked me if I needed help taking off the training gear after we were done. Little creep,” she chuckled as she said it. “Wasn’t nearly as bad as most of the boys at Winzorth though. That’ll be your influence, I’d assume.”

I blinked at that. Was it? I had never especially cared about teaching Agrian to respect women, as far as I was concerned if a woman could not make people respect her against their will then she did not deserve respect.

“Thank you for this, Isabel,” Alira said after a moment. “Really, thank you.” She reached out and squeezed my hand. “I appreciate it. You’ve just about saved my life with this job. I…I probably would’ve either died poor or squeezing out some Voret brat without you.” She smiled, and it was like the sun setting across an ocean. I felt the sight of it reach into my chest and squeeze the breath from me. Despite my best efforts, I could not quite stop the rush of warmth that ran through me as I beheld it. All absurd and strange and mysterious and wrong, all new and fresh, novelty pricking the end of a life stretched on hundreds of times its natural span.

What happened next was pure impulse.

I leaned forwards and took a hold of Alira’s face, guiding her lips over to mine and—

She pulled back, leaning away from me with her eyes made wide by surprise. “Isabel!” she yelped, “what…” Alira was on her feet a moment later, taking a step back, staring at me. I suddenly felt my face burning.

“Ignore that,” I told her. “It was a joke.”

Alira just stared a moment longer.

“That’s…how you feel about me?” she asked.

I was on my feet now, too. Turning away from her. “I do not know. I was curious. Now I am not curious.”

“Isabel,” she took hold of my arm as I tried to leave. “Wait, hold on. I’m sorry, I was just surprised.” I paused, turning to look at her. Alira was not staring with the disgust or contempt I had expected. “I…don’t feel that way about you,” she said apologetically. “I just met you when you were a child. I’m sorry, that’s never going to change.”

I would have laughed, if it were not so pathetic. “I run an oil refinery,” I told her. “I am the most intelligent, capable person in the world, I have achieved more in the last few years than most ever have in their whole lives!”

“I know,” she replied. “I know, and that’s amazing. But I still met you when you were eight.”

I took a moment to master my emotions, then straightened up and left without another word.